As we leave April, which Autism Speaks promotes as World Autism Month, and other organizations have labeled Autism Awareness Month, I want you to know that I do not appreciate the annual celebration.
World Autism Month is brought to us by an organization that has devoted millions of dollars to fund years of genetic research in the hope of finding ‘autism genes.’
It is estimated that 200 to 1,000 genes are implicated in autism. But don’t worry, a new Columbia University study recently identified another 60 new genes. The number of implicated genes informs you that environmental triggers are causing the autism epidemic.
All those wasted research dollars have yielded little information about what causes autism.
But every April, we’re supposed to celebrate this futility?
I do not find the pretty blue lights or bright puzzle pieces charming in any way. To me it has all become signaling to accept the terms of surrender. In my opinion, Autism Awareness has mutated over the past 20 years into Autism Surrender.
And I am not down with surrender.
For me, the response to autism has been advocating and fighting for my kids.
Over the past two decades, I have learned that others are engaged in the same battle – warrior moms and warrior dads.
These are my people. These mothers, fathers, and those who care about them, are the people I advocate for. They are the reasons I write the things I write.
Twenty-five years ago, I could never have envisioned this long strange journey.
I attained autism awareness on a cold, gray March day in 2003.
My wife called me at work to tell me that a psychologist came to our home, assessed my sons and, in about ten minutes, rendered his verdict: Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), an autism spectrum disorder.
And just like that, my sons’ lives, and our lives, were forever changed. What followed was an endless stream of therapies, medical appointments, and often brutal, special education committee meetings.
Caring for our sons dominated every aspect of our lives. Every therapy session, every dollar spent, every decision made, was to help my sons.
Along the way, I met some of those warrior moms and dads who also struggled to help their children, keep their jobs, and keep their families afloat. They have been inspirational to me. These are the toughest, most loving, most generous people you will ever meet.
Their children, like my children, are remarkable.
Do not buy the nonsense that people with autism do not love or do not feel for others.
That is bullshit.
My sons care deeply about their family and others. I have heard other parents say the same thing about their children with autism.
Do not allow the puzzle pieces and blue light propaganda to serve as cover for those who want to deny the humanity of people with autism.
People with autism navigate their lives in quirky, often creative ways. They use everything from keypads to spelling boards to sign language to no language, but, somehow, carve out meaningful lives.
People with autism are to be respected. Their lives are of value.
This is not to minimize the pain, the suffering, the isolation, the judgmental looks of others.
Everyone in my community has seen the judgement in the faces of others when their kids melt down, when a parent has to wrestle their kid to the sidewalk to prevent them from running into city traffic, or when the child has a seizure.
“What is wrong with that kid?”
Just about 20 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came to know some of the warrior moms and dads when he was fighting to clean up America’s waterways. As he explained to Joe Rogan, 14:20 into the recording, “These women kept following me when I would present (at conferences)…They were the mothers of children who believed their children had been intellectually disabled by vaccines…They were rational. They had done their research…The public authorities said these women were crazy, but they didn’t look crazy to me…I felt that I should listen to them.”
Kennedy recounted to Rogan how one warrior mom named Sarah Bridges, a psychologist from Minnesota, had shown up on his doorstep in Hyannisport, Cape Cod, with a pile of studies and said: “I’m not leaving until you read those.”
Sarah’s son, Porter Bridges, “had been a perfectly normal kid, when he got a battery of vaccines at age two,” Kennedy told Rogan. “He lost the ability to speak, he lost his toilet training. He began head banging, he engaged in other stereotypical behaviors like stimming, hand flapping, toe walking, and got an autism diagnosis…And the vaccine court had awarded him 20 million dollars for acknowledging that the child (Porter) had gotten autism from the vaccines. She didn’t want that to happen to other kids.”
Kennedy listened to Sarah and other parents and had the courage to ask why these kids developed autism.
I found Porter Bridges’ case when I investigated the vaccine court and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, starting in 2008. I found a total of 83 cases of vaccine-induced brain damage that included autism. The findings are published in Unanswered Questions from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury
I know this is a stunning realization for some, but it seems that the government was lying to us about the connection between vaccine injury and autism.
Sarah Bridges, the author of A Bad Reaction: A Memoir by Sarah Bridges, connected me to Kennedy.
I recall Kennedy telling me all those years ago: “You have to have data. I respect you, but we need data. We need good science.”
Now as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy is still pounding away with the same theme.
We may soon get the good science that Kennedy has been seeking for two decades as Kennedy’s National Autism Coordinator Diana Diaz recently explained to Leland Vittert on News Nation.
Vittert said that he has autism and supports the government search for a cause for autism. Diaz told him that the data on the causes of autism is soon to be released through the national Autism Data Science Initiative.
And it may not just be about vaccine injury.
In September, Kennedy and President Trump announced some concerns about the connection between Tylenol and autism. There is important science for you to consider in the forthcoming book, Tylenol and Autism: Evidence, Scientific Blunders, and Medicine Gone Wrong, by Dr. William Parker.
Earlier this week, Dr. Robert Malone wrote The Rise of Autism Becomes Clearer on his Substack. It seems that a recent study shows that a number of pharmaceutical products, when taken by pregnant women, are associated with increases in autism.
None of this is welcome news for Big Pharma. They want all of us to believe that autism is caused by bum genes. They want us to believe that people with autism were just unlucky. Sadly, it was their destiny.
There are no environmental causes. Big Pharma is not responsible.
The message is clear: Surrender. Take your puzzle pieces and disappear into the landscape of America where we offer you acceptance but avoid the truth about what got you here.
Surrender is unacceptable.
Finding the truth about the cause – or causes – of autism is something I have been fighting for years. When we understand the causes of autism, we will understand how to prevent it.
Kennedy is leading that fight.
One fine April day in the future, we may get to celebrate Autism Truth Month.
I, for one, will be down for that.
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Mr. Conte: As an autistic person myself, I deeply appreciate this very excellent article you have written. I'm in my 70s now but back in 1960 when I was not yet 6 y.o. I was vaccinated. Back then it was VERY well-known that you NEVER vax any child under the age of 6, and hopefully not until the child is older than 6. This is because the child's brain was not developed well enough to protect against any harm vaxes may well do to the brain. At the time, my mother wanted to put me up for adoption. She truly never wanted me and wasn't a very nice person or a good mother. She left me alone for days on end when I was a baby in a crib. I would go for days with no food, no diaper changes, etc. This was told to me by my birth father who I later found when I was in my 30s. In order for me to be put up for adoption, I had to be vaccinated. My mother took me to the doctor's to be vaxed but he refused because I was too young to be jabbed. He knew it probably would cause harm. While there, my mother went on a very angry rampage and kept insisting I needed to be jabbed. I remember the doctor was very upset and concerned about this and got very quiet for a few moments. Finally, he turned to me and said "Young lady, I truly hope you will be able to remember this in the future. But I really think it's best that I give you the vaccine so you can hopefully be adopted by a loving family, because I think it's best that you get away from your mother." I'm very grateful to that doctor for making that very difficult decision. A couple months later I was adopted and shortly after I was adopted my mother thought I was autistic because I would rock back and forth a lot, which is one sign of autism. There were other things I did that was autistic as well and now late in life I realize those symptoms as autism. Vaccines cause autism, as well as other brain issues, too. I don't believe autism is genetic, I am suspicious of those "studies"; I am a researcher and do know that many "studies" are falsified.
When I was young, autism was not very well-known because kids weren't vaxed before age 6 and I never knew anyone with autism. Today, 1 in 33 kids are autistic. That number used to be 1 in 100,000 back in 1970. Just sharing my 2 cents worth of info.
Roughly 200 - 300 genes have strong, well-supported links to autism. If you include moderate and emerging evidence, the number rises to about 500 - 1,000 genes.
If you count all statistically associated variants from large genome studies, it’s effectively thousands of genes influencing risk in small ways.
Different evidence standards: Some genes (those repeatedly hit by rare mutations) have clear, high-confidence roles. Others show up only in large statistical analyses and have much smaller, less certain effects.
Polygenic architecture: Autism risk often comes from the combined effect of many variants across the genome - not a single “autism gene.” This is similar to traits like height or blood pressure.
Ongoing discovery: Studies like this one from Columbia keep adding genes, but usually at the margins - refining the picture rather than redefining it.
Core set (high confidence): a few hundred genes
Extended set (likely involved): up to ~1,000
Full genetic landscape (including tiny effects): thousands
So when you hear “60 new genes,” it’s not a jump from, say, 200 to 260 in a neat list. it’s more like filling in additional pieces of a very large, already complex puzzle.